A Difficult Industry

The music industry is a very broad topic, and of course applies to everyone, we all listen to music and we all have different tastes.  There is something for everyone, whether it be indie rock- my personal favorite- or the relaxing sounds of new age.  Lets focus on one group, the Indie- hipster rock and punk category, the kinds of bands that play in garages they can’t afford.

How do they market and sell their music? They really use all the talent they have.  For example, my favorite band has a drummer who does excellent graphic design of t-shirts, decals, and the art for albums.  He does a fantastic job marketing the band, and designing sick t-shirts which are very popular in the small fan-base.  His work has gotten incredibly popular with other smaller groups too, and he designs shirts and other items for more groups.

Another fantastic market for the music industry is social media.  For three days now, Mumford and Sons has been trending on Facebook to be seen and appreciated by all teens and older members of society who can use social media.  This has been excellent marketing for the group because they have been getting free marketing for three days straight announcing their return.

Back to indie rock? I think so.

Indie bands use social media in so many different ways, the biggest two are announcements: announcing the release dates of albums and tour dates, and creating hype.  Nothing makes me more excited than a new album release announcement, other than of course the hype around that release.  House of Heroes- my favorite band- is great at this.  The group will release an album, tour it, then get very quiet for a few months.  Then all of a sudden pictures will appear of recording studios, and even once a video with an audio clip and a release date.  The group will also build hype, which is an excellent marketing strategy with an excited fan-base.  Pretty much every form of media does this, movie producers release new trailers, bands release singles, TV shows leave unresolved season endings and then dangle tantalizing previews before a hungry audience, it is really all very cruel.  Over the past few weeks I’ve realized something about bands and this process of building hype.

This isn’t very true of Movie and TV companies, but some bands are great at this.  The technique employed by bands, Mumford and Sons and House of Heroes is a 30 Second commercial, and a 10 second hook.

Here is how I see this working.  When a band releases a new album, its really awesome, to me at least.  I instantly get excited and usually I want to hear what if they have changed styles, how they’re being different and innovative.  Of course, this is why groups release singles, it is a form of a thirty second commercial.  It says, Hi, we’re (insert band name here) this is what we do and this is why, this is why you should listen to us.  It is a way to get people talking about you before you even do anything to make real money, and an excellent one at that.

What about a 10 second hook? This is something that Indie bands do more than mainstream bands.  Indie bands tend to have very passionate and incredibly excited fan-bases, they always want more because of loyalty.  House of Heroes made an excellent use of what I like to think of as a 10 second hook.  The group released a new concept EP in August, the album was sold fantastically, and was release two weeks after a well timed indiegogo campaign to fund a full length concept album.  The hype was built with a series of 10 second hooks, which were very creative and simple.  Once a week almost every week before the album dropped an image would appear on Facebook with a song lyric tagged onto it, causing people to get more and more curious.

This may seem like a stretch, but to me, these forms of marketing are how bands sell through a 30 second commercial and  a 10 second hook.  I am also sure there are lots of other creative ways that groups do this, but these stand out as perfect metaphors in my mind.